Ajewen Cheris
Ajewen Cheris, known as Kel Cheris during her years of faction service and Dzannis Paral much later, is a Kel soldier who is a major character in the Machineries of Empire universe. She has also gone by the name of Shuos Jedao. Cheris appears in Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, Revenant Gun, the short story The Robot's Math Lessons, and the flashfics Birthdays and Sword-Shopping, and is discussed in the flashfic Persimmons. Cheris will return in the novella Glass Cannon (Hexarchate Stories, 2019). Appearance and Personality Cheris is short by Kel standards,Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4 ivory-skinned, and round-faced, with black hair kept in a regulation bob. A conservative, serious woman,Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2 she had no acting ability and was terribly bad at lying.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4 However, she is a mathematical genius on par with Hexarch Nirai Kujen. She can also communicate in Simplified Machine Universal.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2 She was an enthusiastic but mediocre duelistNinefox Gambit, Chapter 5, though she loves dramatic, flashy calendrical swords.Sword-Shopping Her musical tastes frequently align with the soundtracks of her favorite dramas,Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 which usually involve romantic comedy, dueling, and rogue engineers.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8 Her gaming tastes run to dating games and visual novels.Author's remarks She likes ravens and told stories about the ones in her home city.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3,20 She didn't mind Kel jokes, and enjoyed tangerinesNinefox Gambit, Chapter 2 and persimmons.Persimmon Quest Personal Life Cheris's mother, Ajewen Dzera, was a Mwennin; Dzera's husband Ajewen Derow married into the minority sect and learned their customs.Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16 Accordingly, their daughter was natural-born. Since it would have been heretical to follow Mwennin custom as far as naming her after a saint's-day in their old calendar, they chose the name Cheris, "twenty-three," for the high calendar day of her birth.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20 Dzera attempted to pass down Mwennin culture and stories to Cheris,Raven Stratagem, Chapter 16 who spoke Mwen-dal exclusively until she entered school.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20 When Cheris was five years old, her family moved from the Mwennin ghetto to a different area of the City of Ravens Feasting, closer to the sea. The family also stopped celebrating Mwennin birthdays due to the danger of using their old calendar.Birthdays Cheris excelled in mathematics from childhood onward,Birthdays and clandestinely befriended local servitors,The Robot's Math Lessons with whom she discussed mathematics, dramas, her home city, and, later, Kel culture.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2 She quickly learned that her furtive culture and its low language were looked down on in the hexarchate. By the time she was eleven, she had to try not to be sullen when adults at a festival her parents took her to insisted on addressing her in Mwen-dal instead of the high language.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 Her developing need to fit in with broader hexarchate cultureRaven Stratagem, Chapter 13 culminated in applying to become a Kel, a break from the Mwennin norm of avoiding faction service.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20 Despite leaving Mwennin culture, Cheris continued to correspond with a few Mwennin, including writing to her parents in Mwen-dal. While she was in academy, her mother would write back to her in halting high language. On Cheris's twenty-third birthday, her mother gave her a raven luckstone pendantNinefox Gambit, Chapter 2 which she subsequently wore whenever she was out of uniform.Author's remarks Cheris was mainly attracted to women;Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4 known lovers included Linnis OruaSword-Shopping and Shuos AlaiaNinefox Gambit, Chapter 3. She has dated at least two Shuos.Raven Stratagem, Chapter 26 Career Kel Academy Cheris applied to Kel Academy Prime despite objections from her parents. The Nirai tried to recruit her, but she insisted on the Kel and was an attractive enough officer candidate to successfully argue for acceptance.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2 She underwent a five-year stint at Academy Prime. As elsewhere, she befriended the servitors there.Persimmon Quest Along with the rest of her class, Cheris was injected with an all-purpose phobia of vermin and ordered to hold First Formation while assailed by miniature servitors. Cheris held fast and the phobia was removed after the test.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4 She also attended an obligatory historical survey during her first year, later wishing she had paid more attention to the scant details on the Liozh heresy.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6 Her Academy specialty was the mathematics underlying formation mechanics.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1 She wrote a small number of mathematical papers, mostly involving number theory and all brilliant.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 Kujen considered her paper critiquing Nirai Medera's formation generator a novel approach.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 7 In her second year, she succeeded in shedding her low-language accent. She graduated in the top six percent of her year. Before approving her for service, her primary examiner noted her conservativism and questioned why she had chosen to apply to a faction of risk-takers.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 2 The notes approved of her psychological need to assimilate into mainstream hexarchate culture.Raven Stratagem, Chapter Kel Service Approximately five years after Academy, Cheris served as captain of Heron Company, 109-229th Infantry Battalion, in the Chain of Thorns swarm under Brigadier General Kel Farosh. The battalion was landed on the planet Dredge to capture a directional storm generator. Due to field grid failure, Heron Company was missed by the first storm attack, and Cheris developed nonstandard formations to protect her company after realizing that the local terrain was affected by calendrical rot. Although Heron Company captured the generator, they were almost immediately extracted by Farosh and the generator bombed from orbit, rendering the entire battle unnecessary.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 1 With her company slated to be broken apart by Doctrine after their exposure to the quasi-heretical formations that had kept them alive, Cheris was granted a stay by Kel Command's Composite Subcommand Two in exchange for volunteering to retake the Fortress of Scattered Needles, which had been subverted by heretics. Competing with six other candidates to lead the expedition, Cheris proposed using General Shuos Jedao to take back the Fortress, unaware that she had been preselected for the task by Hexarch Shuos Mikodez and manipulated into choosing Jedao as her weapon. Collaboration with Shuos Jedao Cheris's proposal was acceptedNinefox Gambit, Chapters 2,3 and she was transferred to the black cradle facility and anchored to Jedao; the process was overseen by Hexarch Nirai Kujen, though Cheris was not introduced to him.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 4 Jedao and Cheris assembled a large swarm of warmoths to lead to the Fortress. Cheris chose the cindermoth Unspoken Law as the swarm's command moth to keep an eye on Commander Kel Nerevor, and ordered the null emblem to be used as her banner rather than Jedao's infamous Deuce of Gears. etc Hafn Invasion Calendrical Spike Disappearance Reemergence Retirement Collaboration with Shuos Jedao....? Relationships Parents Ajewen Dzera and Derow taught Cheris the Mwennin low language, Mwen-dal, which she only spoke when visiting them.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6 When Cheris came home from school crying because other children had made fun of her Mwennin accent, Dzera comforted her by telling her that everyone had an accent,Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15 but Cheris soon learned that broader hexarchate culture regarded low languages with suspicion.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 6 The struggle between Mwennin culture, so old-fashioned that it was barely within calendrical norms, and the broader and more judgmental hexarchate culture left Cheris determined to leave her home city.Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 20 During her years in Kel Academy, she was uncomfortable when her mother would write to her in not-quite-grammatical handwritten high language,Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 16 but would respond in Mwen-dal. General Shuos Jedao Commander Kel Nerevor General Kel Khiruev High General Kel Brezan Hexarch Shuos Mikodez Servitor 1491625 of Pyrehawk Enclave Hemiola of Tefos Enclave Hexarch Nirai Kujen Trivia * The name "Cheris" is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable and a short i in the second. Cooking the Books Podcast #032 interview: The Importance of Tangerines * Cheris, holding a calendrical sword and with Jedao's shadow in the background, will appear as "The Mathematician" in Hexarchate Tarot.Author's design The card represents the fundamental order of the universe and power over the natural world; reversed, it stands for disorder and natural disaster.Hexarchate Tarot: Major Arcana References Category:Mwennin Category:Kel Category:Humans Category:Alive Category:Hexarchate Category:Compact Category:Anchors